What: Offered Free Coffee on Subway stationsWhy: People are in a hurry and don’t have time for breakfastHow: Bought Coffee and set a table at the subway stationWhen: November, 2010Where: 23rd and 6th avenue, subway station – New York

This week I was introduced to that art sign on subway station at 14th st saying “Please don’t smile to strangers”. The reason behind that, I guess, is to instruct tourists that NYC may not be what we call a very warm place.

And my reaction to that is exactly the opposite: try to make this place that we chose to live as nice as possible.

Thinking about that, I went to the subway and hold some signs “Would you smile for me” and “Have a great day”. Fortunately I had some friends with me and it was even funner than I imagined, we started to compete who would receive more “smiles”. Katie won! : )

So… following your request, today I went t 9:00am to the 23rd station at 6th avenue to offer some free coffee to people. The idea behind of that is that here in New York we are always in such a hurry that is hard even to find time to have a coffee before going to work!

It was a very good experience, people were very receptive and kind. One guy asked me: – Why? Why are you doing that? Nobody here does it! And My answer: That’s exactly why!!!

Another girl was exclaiming: – Uow, that could be the beginning of a love story!

I, personally, just like to imagine that in someway I can affect those people’s day and, by doing that, start a new chain of something good! : )

So, you choose to see that, you deserve it:

And once again, thanks for my friend Luiza Trigo for filming and photographing it! : )

Another complain that I received this week was about people spreading their legs on subway, even when it’s crowded. It occurs specially on the new trains, because the old ones (yellow and orange) already have delimited seats.

So today my friends and I decided to improvise this delimitation with some tape. We took the L train until the 8th avenue station, waited for the cleaning guy to leave and started to tape the lines on the train, than quickly moved to other seats to try to disguise what we were doing.

I must confess that I’m that kind of girl who never did anything wrong in the childhood, so the feeling that I could be “damaging” public propriety was making me really nervous. Specially here in US, where you can be arrested for basically anything.

Anyway, we were seating and waiting to see what would be people’s reaction and I guess New Yorkers are already used to any kind of weird thing, but I was happy to see that all the limits were respected! At least this time! : )

Every Monday I’ll present a new poll with options of new projects for you to choose. By Friday I’ll take the one with more votes and execute it during the weekend. As soon as I finish, I’ll post about it for you to take a look!

About:

IsA Wonderful World is a series of urban interventions created to break the routine and bring joy to people living in big cities. We deeply believe that positive attitudes can lead into a kinder society.